INDICES OF COMPARISON: GENDER
INDICES OF COMPARISON: GENDER
The status
of women in all types of societies but particularly in the patriarchal is
determined by various types of taboos ; that are attached to women generally.
These taboos might be protective or preventive or productive.
Toda
(tribe)
taboos on women are preventive as the impurity of women arising out of
mensuration, child birth etc. Makes unsuited for the Toda religio-ceremonial
life which centres round the sacred buffalo dairy. Consequently anything
affiliated to the buffalo dairy and milk is generally to be prevented from
being made impure through contact with women.
Such
hard and fast rules cannot be laid down however for all patriarchal societies.
Among
Ho both dominant as well as subservient husbands are equally common.
Among Ho’s heavy bride price is prevalent so that Ho girls remain unmarried for
long time.
Among
Gonds in various aspects of social life women enjoy status and freedom
in the choice of husband, premarital sexual life seeking of divorce and so on.
Women as labourers are prized in Gond society.
The
patrilocal Tharu are dominated by their wives. Tharu women are notorious
for the influence they have even over people from the plain.
The
polyandrous Khasa are well known for the double standard of their women;
that is a polarity in their women’s sex life. When a woman is at her husband’s
house she is drudge with no position or freedom or will of her own, but
according to the traditional practice she frequently visits her parents house
and once in her own village all controls and restriction are lifted. The
accumulated tension find release in sexual indulgence.
The
position of women among the patriarchal Naga tribe of Assam varies from
tribe to tribe. Sema Naga women are socially better placed than Ao and
Angami women. Sema women have no dominant voice.
Division
of labour along gender lines occurs in all human human societies. In some
cultures the Ju/Hoansi in southern Africa for example many tasks that
men and women undertake may be shared.
People
may perform work normally assigned to the opposite sex without loss of face.
However
men and women are rigidly segregated in what they do. Such in the case in many
maritime cultures where seafarers abroad fishing and trading ships are usually
men.
For
instance we find temporary all male communities abroad ships of coastal Basque
fisherman in Northwestern Spain.
Yupik
Eskimo whalers in Alaska and Swahili merchants sailing along
the East African coast.
These
seafarers commonly leave their wives, mothers and daughters behind in their
home ports sometimes for months at a time.
Gender
demarcated grouping also occurs in many tradition horticultural societies. For
instance Mohwak, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora Indians of
New York -- the famous six nations of Iroquois society was divided into two
parts consisting of sedentary women on the one hand and highly mobile men on
the other.
Women
who were blood relatives to one another lived in the same village and shared
the job of growing the corn, beans, squash that all Iroquois relied upon for
subsistence.
Although
men built the houses and the wooden palisades that protect villages and also
helped women clear fields for cultivation, they did their most important work,
some distance away from the villages. This consisted of hunting, fishing,
trading, warring and diplomacy.
As
a consequence men were mostly transients in the villages being present only for
brief periods.
Traditionally
Iroquois viewed women’s activities as less prestigious than those of men but
they explicitly acknowledged women as the sustainers of life.
Moreover
women headed the long houses (dwelling occupied by matrilineal extended
families) descent and inheritance passed through women and ceremonial
life centered on women’s activities.
Although
men held all leadership positions outside households--sitting on the councils
of the villages, tribes and the league of six Nations-the women of their clans
were the ones who nominated them for these positions and held Veto power over
them. Thus Iroquois male leadership was balanced by female authority.
Relationship
between the sexes in six Nations Iroquois society with members of neither sex
being dominant or submissive to the other. Related to this seems to have been a
low incidence of rape for outside observers in the 19th century
widely commented upon its apparent absence within Iroquois.
Even
in warfare sexual violation of female captives was virtually unheard. They
never violate the chastity of any women of their prison.
Although
Iroquois men often absent from the village when present they ate and slept
with women.
This
contrasts the habits of Mundurucu Indians of Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest.
Mundurucu men and women work, eat and sleep separately. From age 13 onwards
male live together in one large house while women, girls and preteen boys
occupy two or three houses grouped around the men’s house. For all intents and
purposes men associate with men and women with women.
Among
the Mundurucu Indians relations between the sexes is not harmonious but rather
one of oppositions. According to their belief sex roles were once reversed.
Women
ruled over men and controlled the sacred trumpets that are symbol of power and
represent the reproductive capacities of women
But
because women could not hunt they could not supply meat demanded by the ancient
spirits, that abided in the trumpets. This enabled the men to take the trumpets
from the women, establishing their dominance in the process. Ever since the
trumpets have been carefully guarded and hidden in the men’s house and
traditionally women were prohibited from ever seeing them.
Mundurucu
men express fear and envy towards women and seek to control them by force. For
their part the women neither like nor accept a submissive status an even though
men occupy all formal positions of political and religious leadership, women
are autonomous in the economic realm.
Margaret
Mead : Study of Sepik region of Papua New Guinea
Book:
Sex and Temperament in three Primitive Societies
Mead
found a different pattern of male and female behaviour in each of the cultures
ARAPESH:
1 Inclination towards peace and
absence of warfare.
2 involvement
and role of both the sexes in so called maternal roles such as rearing
of children
3 Temperament
of both the sexes were gentle, responsive and cooperative
4 Children:
passive, emotional and secure
5 Arapesh
predominantly maternal in their paternal aspect and feminine in their social aspect.
Mundgumor: 1 Patriarch
2 father/husband/son had the right to trade women in their Family exchange for another wife.
3 Father could trade his daughter/sister
and son could trade his sister in
exchange of wife
4 Results in sense of competition,
hostility prevails between father and son
5 Mother viewed their daughters as sexual
rivals and have feeling of jealousy
towards their daughters.
6 Daughters were seen allies to their
fathers and son to their mothers.
7 This divide in the family results in
hostility, suspicion and brutality.
8 Announcement in pregnancy leads to
spousal conflicts
9 Children grow up in hostile environment
which made them head hunting tribe.
Techmbuli: 1 Conventional gender roles were
interchange in this society i.e. reversal
in roles.
2
women play expressive and instrumental
roles.
3
Seen as breadwinners
4
Perform activities like fishing,
trading, weaving etc.
5 They look after their children and
husbands as little boys not as their
counterparts
6 Men decorate themselves and make
arrangement of different ceremonies
the
above explanation shows that how gender roles vary on several factors, culture
and social conditioning of gender
Different
culture leads to the formation of different personalities and gender roles.
Comments